The Australian Embassy in Manila has named four provinces in the country that will be the experiment sites for soil management cooperation between the Philippines and Australia.

“Experiment sites will be continued or expanded in Agusan del Sur for rubber-based intercropping system, Tarlac for rice system, Ilocos Norte for vegetable system, and Bataan for agriculture system for identification,” the embassy told the Philippine News Agency in a Viber message.

Early this week, Australian Ambassador to the Philippines Hae Kyong Yu PSM said in a forum of the Makati Business Club that part of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by the government for the strategic partnership is the cooperation on soil management.

“Part of the strategic partnership is an MOU on soil health strategy. We are working with specific provinces. We chose four provinces because they all have different soil composition. And we are working with them to research how you can achieve optimum soil health for agricultural production,” Yu said.

The envoy said improving the health of soil of agricultural land in the country will help in improving Philippines’ agricultural export not only with Australia but also with other countries.

Aside from soil health management, Yu said land consolidation will help in increasing farm harvests.

“In the Philippines, you have some issues and challenges in terms of scale of agriculture. You have small plots because of your land title around the agricultural land. We have more consolidation to allow economy of scale, large scale of farming,” Yu said.

“We should really trade more on food. We should be getting more Filipino agriculture goods in Australia, fresh produce, and we should be getting more into your market because of the quality, affordable products,” she added. (PNA)